Tag: MacGuffin

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Animation Features Movies

The Bad Guys 2

Director – Pierre Perifel Co-Director JP Sans – 2025 – US – Cert. PG – 104m

****

A criminal gang of animals led by a wolf mastermind attempts to go straight but are extorted into doing one last job – animated feature sequel is out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 25th

Like its predecessor, The Bad Guys 2 manages to successfully parody the meanness and violence of the gangster movie genre in a children’s animated film without any of the meanness and violence normally associated with that genre. You might wonder where you could go with what is essentially a sequel to five bad guys turning from bad to good. This skilfully implements its answer: introduce a rival gang, as bad as the original protagonists, who force our reformed heroes into that old gangster movie trope: they want to go straight, but before they can get there they have to do one last job. 

Here’s the twist. The Bad Guys, like most gangsters, are (mostly) male.  Their new rivals, The Bad Girls, are all female.

Thus, the eponymous, anthropomorphised animal gang Mr Wolf (voice: Sam Rockwell from (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Martin McDonagh, 2017; Seven Psychopaths, Martin McDonagh, 2012; Lawn Dogs, John Duigan, 1997) the leader of the pack, Mr.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Take Care of My Cat
(Go-yang-i-leul
Boo-tak-hae,
고양이를 부탁해)

Director – Hong Eun-won – 2001 – South Korea – Cert. PG – 112m

****

A cat passes between a group of twentysomething girls as each one finds they can no longer look after it – plays in Echoes In Time | Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema which runs from Monday, October 28th until the end of 2024 at BFI Southbank

(2024 explanatory note: This was, I believe, the first South Korean film to get a UK theatrical release. It was certainly the first one I ever reviewed, for What’s On in London back in 2002. Soon after this, Metro-Tartan film distributors would release a good deal of horror / thriller / action movies in cinemas and on DVD under their Asia Extreme brand, but it would be a long time before the UK saw the theatrical release of another South Korean film outside of those genres. What follows below is the What’s On in London review from 2002.)

Two areas of the world currently make its most interesting films. One is Iran and surrounding area, which has been fairly well represented in terms of UK releases. The other is South Korea, largely and criminally neglected by UK distributors.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Mission: Impossible
Dead Reckoning
Part One

Director – Christopher McQuarrie – 2022 – US – Cert. 12a – 163m

*****

Tom Cruise’s seventh and director Christopher McQuarrie’s third Mission: Impossible outing delivers globetrotting action and one of the most incredible stunts ever committed to film – out in UK cinemas on Monday, July 10th

It seems almost fatuous to attempt to synopsise this latest Mission: Impossible effort because it basically boils down to various parties including Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his allies chasing after a key which most of them don’t know what it opens. I tell a lie, actually two halves of a key (this sounds a lot like the ancient artefact in this year’s Indiana Jones movie, which I’m sure is pure coincidence) each one of which can be used to verify that the other is the genuine article and not a fake. This MacGuffin, the thing all the characters want and which propels them through the story, in turn provides producer and star Tom Cruise, director Christopher McQuarrie and their collaborators with the excuse for a series of exhilarating, bravura set-pieces.

There’s also the visual pleasure of this franchise’s usual amount of people wearing photorealistic masks to disguise themselves as other people, and later ripping off (or having others rip off) their fake faces to reveal their real ones.… Read the rest